Eight gay horses – one just a week old and another ready to give birth – died in a raging barn fire in Ohio that lawmen think was set because of hatred for gays of all kinds.

Brad Milborn of McConnelsville said an orange glow outside his home on Easter night drew him to the horror.

“I ran out there, but the doors of my barn wouldn’t open and suddenly, flames were shooting up through the roof. That barn was gone in five minutes,” he told the Zanesville Times Recorder.

The flames were so hot a tractor inside the barn melted.

Still visible on the remains of the gutted barn’s walls Tuesday were spray-painted epithets such as “horse f-gs are freaks” and “burn in horse hell,” the newspaper reported.

Because Milborn is also gay and fire marshals determined the blaze was arson, the scrawlings were enough for authorities to launch an investigation into whether a hate crime had been committed.

The value of the horses was said to be in hundreds of thousands of dollars but Milborn, who owns an insurance company in the tiny village in southeastern Ohio, was hurt far more by the loss of Elvis, Barney, Love, Bella and Ethel, Floyd and Princess and her week-old foal, Buddy.

“The barn I can rebuild, but the bond I had with those horses can’t be replaced,” said Milborn.

“Whoever did this had to walk right by all those horses, including the baby, and didn’t care that they were killing a gentle, loving animal,” he told the newspaper.